AUGUSTINIAN MEMORANDA
Memoranda of the religious of the islands of the West in regard to the matters to be discussed with his Majesty or his royal Council of the Yndias by Fray Diego de Herrera.
The matters which father Fray Diego de Herrera is to discuss with his Majesty or with his royal Council. For the due discharge of our conscience because of our obligation, your Reverence is going there [i.e., to Spain], since you were one of the first in the country, in order to inform him both by word and writing of the evil policy and regimen in this country, both in the conquest and in the maintenance of the land, so that his Majesty as a most Christian [king] may provide their correction and discharge his royal conscience.
First: This is the way in which the land is pacified and colonies established. A captain goes with soldiers and interpreters to the village of which he has had notice only, or to one that has been pillaged by other Spaniards. The people are told that if they wish friendship with the Castilians they must immediately give them tribute. If the people acquiesce, then they consider the amount that each man must pay, and they are compelled to pay it immediately. Sometimes, the village has been pillaged because the people did not agree to what was asked from them. It also seems to be the proper thing to pillage them, if they do not wait and if they abandon their houses. All this takes place without having benefited the natives at all, and without giving them to understand that his Majesty sent them to inform the natives of God. We Spaniards are held in ignominy in this country and our name is held in abomination, as is even the most holy name of the Lord, and we are considered as the usurpers of others’ possessions, as faithless pirates, and as shedders of human blood, because we illtreat our own friends, and harass and trouble them; while many acts of violence and force are used toward them both to their own houses and to their wives and daughters and possessions, and they themselves are illtreated by word and deed. In this they have no one to defend and protect them. The most abandoned inhabitants and those at a distance commit the greatest injuries and murders; and when those in command hear of it, they do not institute relief by sending to make investigations of events so far away, for they say that it must appear in writing, and that it is a great expense and trouble to send to a distance time after time, as [is said by] the present visitor who is the first to complain of it. But he gives information of it and asks why he should go to visit all the land. Item: Because of the great outcries, murders, and captivities that have been made, both by captains and by other leaders and soldiers throughout the islands, under pretext that they did not have peace writs, although Spaniards had never gone there; and also to many who had the peace writ already and were promised safety in his Majesty’s name, that writ has been transgressed and broken. There has been no punishment inflicted for all the above which is very well known and notorious to all people. Consequently, great dissoluteness has reigned, and I believe that there are very few whose skirts are clean of this vice. For example, no aid has been given to the friends who pleading their just causes and the injuries that they have received from others, have asked protection and aid. Neither have amends been made to them as it seemed more trouble than gain. Such have been few [who have thus pleaded]. I only remember of a chief of Xaro, by name Mamicoan, a Christian, who pleaded before the alcalde-mayor of Çubu, Don Gonzalo de Luna, and the justice of Çubu, saying that while he was absent another old man, his neighbor, had burned his house. His father and mother had been burned and other damages committed, and that, as the chief declared, simply because he had just been married and become a Christian at Çubu. The religious who lived there at the same time interceded for him, asking that four Spaniards be sent to arrest that old man. They were answered that it would cause an insurrection in the land if they did that. Besides the above there is a pirate called Caxabic, who devastates Çamal and Masbat every year. Item: The Joloans devastate all the Pintados as well as Camarines, and those of Ylo and Vilnabagan. The Spaniards never go in pursuit of them or punish them, or humiliate them, or make them restore their booty. But they only go to rob those sheep for the second time by demanding tribute from those whom they know not to have been entirely cleaned up by the others.
It is considered as a just cause for war in the War Council if the Indians say that they do not care for the friendship of the Spaniards, or if they build any fort to defend themselves. Such Indians are killed, captured, pillaged, and their houses burned. For that reason occurred the war of Bitis and Lubao[1] and the forts which were taken by Juan de Sauzedo; and those of Cainta, where the night before, an Indian having climbed into a palmtree cried out: “Spaniards, what did my ancestors do or owe to you that you should come to pillage us;” and that of Papagan. In all of the above many people were killed and captured, and sold as slaves, especially in Papagan, for it is said that they defied the Spaniards, although there was no resistance in any of those places. It is considered as an occasion for just war by the War Council and a village may be destroyed and all those captured may be enslaved, if any Spaniard has been killed in the village; although the occasions that the dead man might have given or the wrongs that he might have committed are not considered, as is neither the fact that those natives do not understand or have anyone whom they can ask to avenge them unless it be God and their justice. They formerly had no king or ruler from whom to ask satisfaction. This chastisement is meted out without any thought of the guilty ones, and often although only one man is to blame, the entire village is punished. Almost never has the guilty one paid for his crime, or the accomplice to it, for they immediately take to hiding. So was made the war in the island of Çubu, against those villages of Candaya, because a common seaman was killed; and in Bohol, because they killed a worthless fellow on account of his many exactions in the collection of the tribute. There as they did not find any people in the village where he was killed, they seized seven Indians from a village lower down which is called Baye, and hanged them because they confessed that they had known beforehand that the other villages had agreed to kill the man. Item: Because the natives killed Mena and three others who asked them for tributes, in the island of Marinduc [i.e., Marinduque], Captain Luis de la Haya went by the governor’s orders and that of all the Council of War and destroyed the islands of Banton and Malindus [i.e., Marinduque], and also that of Guimbar.[2] The greater portion of the land has no other peace than that some captain and soldiers have lodged there and told the people that they must pay tribute if they wished peace with the Spaniards. They have no other cause or reason for it than being there one or two days to collect what tribute the people could give and then pass on to another village. This was the procedure along all the coast of Bulinau and Ylocos for nearly one hundred leguas, where raids have been made twice in one year. Thus have more than six thousand taes of gold been collected, a sum equivalent to about one thousand marcos, and quite equal to that amount in fact. The same thing has been done along other coasts although not in the same proportion.
With no greater pacification than the above, the land is assigned and divided, whereupon the encomendero taking some companions with him goes to the village or villages which have been given him, and makes them the following speech: “Take heed that I am your master, and that the governor has given you to me to protect from other Spaniards who annoy you.” This is the universal reasoning of most of them, and they make no mention of God or the king. Then they immediately demand the tribute, each one the amount that he can get without any limit. They have generally asked three or four maes apiece from the Lusones, and two or three from the Pintados. That is a very excessive sum in the beginning for a people who do not know what it means to pay tribute. If some of the people do not wait for the encomendero in order to agree to give him the tribute, their houses and village are burned, as was done by the master-of-camp in the village of Baban, and Navarro in his encomienda of Çurigo. Many of the encomenderos stay in their encomiendas all or the greater part of the year looking after their interests, where they prove a great hindrance and obstacle to their Indians.
No attention is paid to the instruction, nor is protection or aid given to the religious for it. On the contrary they have hitherto opposed us going out or building houses among the Indians, but [try to force] us to live among the Spaniards. Neither then nor now has there been any aid extended on the part of those who govern, either to attract the natives to our holy faith or to induce them to forsake their evil customs, for they say that it is too early, although they could be got rid of with a single word. For as they are a timid race they obey immediately in this; and the Spaniards have never tried to overlook anything in the Christians in order thus to invite all the others. On the contrary they have generally harassed them more than the others as they are more peaceful and nearer at hand. They have been very slow to recompense them even in words, and it has consequently happened that very few natives outside of Çubu have been baptized for the above reasons. There is in general very little Christianity among the Spaniards, who pay very little attention to divine worship and to their ministers and even with great difficulty have poor shacks been erected in which to celebrate the divine offices. There is great lewdness among the [native] women both among infidels and the influential women—this last secretly. Many slaves have been sold and many others have been retained who have been enslaved and captured illegally and unjustly. Some, in order that they might be made use of, and might not be taken from their owners in order to return them to their own villages, have fraudulently been made to come to ask for baptism and have become Christians. Many islands and villages are devastated and almost wiped out, partly by the Spaniards or because of them, and partly by famines of which, or at the beginning of them, the Spaniards were the reason; for either by fear or to get rid of the Spaniards the natives neglected their sowing, and when they wished to sow then anguish came upon them, and consequently, many people have died of hunger.
Many injuries have been and are still practiced on the Indians by the Spaniards or by their encomenderos themselves. Even murders have been committed; and since they live in remote regions, and since the aggrieved parties cannot go to plead their justice, or have no one to plead it for them, if it even comes to the ears of the governor, it is not corrected. For the latter either says that it must appear in writing or that when he shall go to that place he will inflict punishment for the matter. So he remarked to me when I told him of an Indian woman whom Luys Perez had killed, and of the other chief woman who had been imprisoned, and of the Indian whom Gudinez killed. So declared the adelantado when the deeds of Luys de la Aya, Andres de Ybarra, and of the accountant were discussed.
All or most of the Spaniards act as justices when they go through the villages and decide the suits and quarrels among the natives. They take pay for it, although they often judge unjustly in favor of him who pays more. Your Reverence will inform his Majesty of the condition of the people and that they do not have any king or sovereign, but live in bands or families where the richest or the most powerful is the leader. Some tyrannize over and pillage the others. The slaves owned by the natives are partly so from time immemorial, for their parents and grand-parents were slaves, as were their ancestors; Some have become slaves for loans and debts because they always reckon the loans by usurious rates which are greatly practiced here. Some are slaves for crimes, either for having stolen the slightest thing or for having given false testimony, or having dared do anything by word or deed against a chief. Others, and these are the fewest, are those who have been captured in the wars which they wage among themselves, some of which have been waged for many years between enemies, while others are waged because of some injury done to one side by the other. It is difficult to ascertain which of those causes is just. However, they are so evilly inclined a race in respect to this that when occasion offers they do not keep faith with their friend. Since the coming of the Spaniards to this land there has been another kind of slaves who have sold themselves very cheaply in times of famine in order to live during the famine—the father to his son, the brother to his brother, the uncle to his nephew, and others likewise—in which he who bought showed charity to the one purchased. Such slaves were never sold unless by such an one who could not live through his own efforts. I do not speak of those who pillaged the timauas and sold them as slaves.